RIP Tom Seaver

One of the Fox sports channels had a nice tribute to Tom Terrific last night. Included interviews with Nancy Seaver, Hank Aaron and a few others. More footage with Tom in the vineyard and at home with a wall full of signed baseballs. So many athletes find adjusting to life without sports very hard. It is easy to see why.. But Seaver loved his vineyard. His time on this earth was too short, but he found a passion early in life and later in life. That's the way to live.
 
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There was a lot of humility in that interview. Seaver did not profess an expertise in wine making, or even in growing grapes. He contracted with others for that and yielded to them. 3.5 acres is so tiny a vineyard that this was done not for money but a love of working in the fields. They produced only 440 cases per year, about 5000 bottles. . Clearly Seaver, in wine making as in baseball, was seeking excellence. The interview gave some insights into Seaver the man that I somehow missed as a baseball fan.

Last photo, posted by his daughter:

https://images.app.goo.gl/PveaJZWpSh3CWhAH7
 
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I wrote this over the weekend after the passing of Seaver opened a floodgate of memories. Warning it is a very long read but thought Met fans may enjoy.

[attachment=1606]My Tom Seaver Memories.pdf[/attachment]
 
SJUNC Wrote: I wrote this over the weekend after the passing of Seaver opened a floodgate of memories. Warning it is a very long read but thought Met fans may enjoy.

Beautifully done. Thanks so much for sharing your memories!

Our childhood and growth experiences often are intertwined by the memories they evoke. Sports and those relationships with people we only know from afar stay strangely with us and are connected to our interpersonal relationships that define us. Family, friends, community, loyalty and passion are tied directly into those experiences.

For me growing up in Queens as a Mets fan during the 1960s and 1970s Tom Seaver is a connection to my childhood and all of those memories that went with it. His passing hit me in a way that defies logic, yet it definitely hit me. Your written piece tapped in to that universal growth experience that connects us to things we can not completely articulate. Thanks again for sharing!
 
Though you may like this:

The Baseball 100: No. 41, Tom Seaver

By Joe Posnanski Feb 15, 2020 207
Starting in December and ending on Opening Day, Joe Posnanski will count down the 100 greatest baseball players by publishing an essay on a player every day for 100 days. In all, this project will contain roughly as many words as “Moby Dick.” Yes, we know it’s nutty. We hope you enjoy.
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Take a moment for yourself, if you will, and think about the great players — the truly great ones, the all-time players — who you got to see play live. On July 5, 1985, when I was 18 years old, I saw Tom Seaver pitch in that mausoleum of a ballpark, Cleveland Municipal Stadium. If the records are correct, there were 6,024 other people there, too. It didn’t feel like that many. The place felt deader than normal. The Tribe was the worst team in the American League, and football season in Cleveland had begun in the imagination.
The Tribe started a guy named Jerry Reed, who has the same name as the singer who did “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).” That detail doesn’t matter at all for this piece, but it seems significant enough to include. Jerry Reed made 12 big-league starts in his career. This was his third.
Seaver, meanwhile, was making the 603rd start of his career. He was almost 41, and he was pitching for the Chicago White Sox, and he was a walking, talking legend. No, Seaver not the perfect pitching machine he had once been. In his youth, at his best, he blended a blistering fastball with a heart-stopping curveball with a vicious slider with a flawless motion that looked like it was pulled out of a “How to Pitch” pop-up book with a toughness that came from his time in the Marines.
And that mind! Everybody talked from the start about Seaver’s pitching mind. He seemed to know, instinctively, exactly what pitch to throw at exactly what time. “Blind people,” Reggie Jackson once said, “come to the park just to listen to him pitch.”
By 1985, Seaver was worn down, tired, his fastball had faded, his curveball no longer bit. Seaver still knew things about pitching, though, things they don’t teach in books or discuss during mound conferences. He knew things about pitch location and changing speeds and being unpredictable and picking up a hitter’s weaknesses. And even without his best stuff, he was still among the better pitchers in American League.
That day, he baffled and befuddled Cleveland’s lineup. He gave up two hits in the first five innings (both to Julio Franco) and just kept on going. He had a shutout going into the ninth — the score was 8-0 — and only a few of us stragglers remained in the stadium. Only then did Seaver lose juice and interest. He gave up a couple of singles and a three-run homer to the much forgotten Tony Bernazard. Seaver looked pretty mad at himself when he was taken out, but it still ended up being his 296th career victory.
After the game, Cleveland’s manager, Pat Corrales, offered a quote that makes more sense to me the older I get.
“Seaver’s the same guy I watched in 1967,” Corrales said, “except that he doesn’t throw as hard.”
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In 1974, at the height of his greatness — he had already won two Cy Young awards and led the Mets to two pennants and a World Series title — Seaver released one of the oddest and most enjoyable baseball books any great player has ever written. It is not a biography. It is not a tell-all. The book is called “How I Would Pitch to Babe Ruth.”
It is not what you might expect. The book is actually a collection of some of the greatest baseball articles ever written — none of them by or about Tom Seaver. Included in the book are John Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” about Ted Williams’ last at-bat; Jack Olsen’s marvelous story about how Al Kaline suffered for his craft; Jerry Izenberg on Stan Musial; Ring Lardner on Ty Cobb; and a couple of Roger Kahn stories about the Boys of Summer Dodgers.
Every piece in the book was accompanied by a prologue Seaver wrote about each player. For the Josh Gibson story, for instance, he wrote about his own feelings about segregation (opposed). For the Stan Musial story, he wrote about how he always wanted to bat one time using Musial’s famous peekaboo stance (he never had the guts to try it). And for many of the others, he did, in fact, offer how he might have pitched the all-time greats if given the chance.
So here are a few of those — how Seaver would pitch to some of the best hitters:
Henry Aaron: This wasn’t imagination; Seaver and Aaron matched up 93 times (Seaver held him to a .220 average; Aaron hit five home runs). Each matchup was special, though, because Aaron had been Seaver’s hero. The first time Seaver faced Aaron, it was 1967, and Seaver had to turn away from the plate and look out to the outfield just to compose himself. He wrote that it felt so familiar because he had dreamed it so many times. Seaver then turned back around, blanked his mind and threw an inside fastball; Aaron grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.
Five innings later, he faced Aaron again, threw the same inside fastball and watched Aaron deposit it over the left-field wall.
How Seaver would pitch Aaron: Unpredictably, never throwing the same pitch twice.
Ernie Banks: Seaver and Banks faced each other 31 times, so there were no secrets between them. Seaver generally owned Banks, holding him to .138 average. But, Seaver admitted, this was largely because he didn’t face Banks when Mr. Cub was at his peak.
Seaver remembered one pitch in particular. It was a day game at Wrigley Field in June 1968, and Banks was mired in a slump, having gone 0-for-18 in his previous four games. In the bottom of the sixth, Seaver had Mr. Cub down 0-2 and threw a curveball about six inches off the ground. Banks golfed it off the left-field catwalk for a home run. “Yes, sir!” Banks said to himself as he rounded the bases, “a home run in Wrigley Field!” Seaver couldn’t help but smile.
How Seaver would pitch Banks: Start with hard stuff up and inside and try to put him away with sweeping pitches just off the plate … but beware that you keep those pitches away.
Johnny Bench: They faced each other 96 times, with Seaver holding Bench to a .179 average. (In the middle of Seaver’s career, Bench was his catcher with the Reds.)
But that low average doesn’t really describe the battle between them; Bench hit two home runs off Seaver. Seaver feared nobody on the mound, but he came closest to fearing Bench. In Game 1 of the 1973 National League Championship Series, Bench came up in the ninth inning. Seaver had struck out 13 and was throwing his fastball by everybody — but not Bench.
Seaver threw a fastball — “It just didn’t seem to have anything on it,” he would say quietly afterward — and Bench crushed it to left for a walk-off homer.
Four days later, in Game 5 of the series, Bench came up in the first inning with runners on second and third and two outs. Seaver never hesitated. He intentionally walked him.
How Seaver would pitch Bench: Carefully.
Mighty Casey: They never faced each other. Seaver expected that Casey would be a tough man to face in a clutch situation.
How Seaver would pitch Casey: He wasn’t sure of the pattern — probably fastballs up and in, sliders away — but one thing he definitely knew: Seaver would not have thrown three fastballs down the middle of the plate like the pitcher did in the poem.
Roberto Clemente: They faced each other 65 times, and Seaver generally got the best of it — he held Clemente to a .242 average with 21 strikeouts.
How Seaver would pitch Clemente: Fastballs and sliders on the extreme outside corner of the plate. If you could hit that tiny spot — “Imagine a box in that corner just big enough to hold one baseball,” Seaver said — Clemente would tip his cap and head back to the dugout. But miss it by the tiniest of degrees and there would be hell to pay.
Ty Cobb: The book was written in 1974, and in it Seaver called Cobb’s hit record of 4,189 unbreakable. A little more than a decade later, Pete Rose broke it.
How Seaver would pitch Cobb: “I’d keep the ball low, trying to make him hit on the ground rather on a line drive to the outfield … And if Cobb bunted and I had to cover first, I’d be very careful.”
Rogers Hornsby: Seaver, unfortunately, does not go into how he would pitch Hornsby, which is a shame because I’m dying to know. But he did talk about Hornsby’s obsessive views about hitting. Hornsby believed that a hitter should never drink a beer, should never read a book and should never see a movie because of the effect it has on the eyes.
Seaver was dubious about the book and movie part. “Reading and seeing movies helps you train and stimulate your mind while also helping you relax,” he wrote.
And as for abstinence from beer? Seaver said, “Well, it’s fine to take care of your body, but nobody likes a fanatic.”
Mickey Mantle: Seaver faced Mantle one time … sort of. It was at the 1968 All-Star Game. Seaver was 23 years old and throwing just about as hard as anyone in baseball history. Mantle was 36, his body was closer to 60, and he was just about at the end. He was at that Fonzie point in his career, when everyone in the crowd would just cheer him for showing up* — and sure enough, he got a long and lasting standing ovation before the Seaver at-bat.
*By the end of the show “Happy Days,” EVERYBODY was getting that Fonzie treatment, where the studio audience would cheer Mr. Cunningham or Joannie or Jenny Piccalo for just having the good form to show up.
Seaver threw four fastballs down the middle, and Mantle struck out.
How Seaver would pitch Mantle: He would throw fastballs, but certainly the down-the-middle fastballs he used in the All-Star Game. “At his peak,” Seaver said of the four fastballs he threw, “Mantle probably would have hit one of them through the dome.”
Willie Mays: Seaver faced Mays 26 times and allowed just five hits, none of them a home run. But Seaver readily acknowledged that he never did face the real Willie Mays. By the time Seaver came along, Mays’ bat had slowed. After that, Mays was Seaver’s teammate with the Mets.
Seaver tells a funny story: At the All-Star Game in 1970, Mays complained, “Hey, when you gonna throw me a changeup? You throw me that fastball away, that slider away, I can’t hit that stuff anymore. I’m an old man! Throw me a changeup, man.”
Seaver promised he would.
And the next time he faced Mays, did he throw Mays a changeup? Absolutely not. He threw nothing but hard sliders that ran away like the Road Runner, and Seaver struck Mays out three times. No, Seaver didn’t buy that old-man talk one bit, not from Willie Mays.
How Seaver would pitch Mays: Hard stuff away, away, away, as far away as possible.
Frank Robinson: Seaver faced Robinson 15 times — seven of those in the 1969 World Series — and allowed just two singles. But he never forgot a lesson he learned from one of those singles. It was the World Series, Seaver had a 2-2 count and threw what he thought was the perfect fastball just on/off the outside corner. Robby fouled it off.
So he came back with the same pitch, another perfect fastball on/off the outside corner. Robby fouled it off.
That was it: The setup was complete. Seaver had the great man looking outside, and so he reared back and threw the best inside fastball he knew how to throw — and Robinson turned on it and hit it so hard the Seaver would say he never forgot the sound, much less the harrowing speed.
How Seaver would pitch Robinson: Away, away, away — and never, ever try to get cute.
Babe Ruth: Here’s the title of the book. With Ruth, Seaver let his imagination go and actually played out a couple of at-bats.
How Seaver would pitch Ruth: Seaver would start Ruth off with a sinking fastball, low and on the outside corner of the plate. He imagines getting a strike call as Ruth lets the pitch go by.
With the count 0-1, Seaver would relax and tell himself he was in control of the at-bat now. He would try the same pitch again, low and away, but envisioned Ruth letting it go by for a ball. No more playing around. Seaver would come in with a slider that would begin on the inside of the plate and break hard and in. It’s hard to tell how many sliders Ruth saw in his career, but he certainly never saw one like this. He would swing and miss. Strike two.
Now Seaver would have Ruth’s attention. The Bambino would dig in. He would probably expect another exploding slider; that pitch would undoubtedly fill his mind. Seaver instead would throw that fastball again, down and away, perfect spot — and Ruth would strike out with a big swing.
In the sixth inning, though, they would meet again. Seaver would still feel strong. He would decide to challenge Ruth with a high fastball — let’s see if this guy can handle the high heat. Ruth would turn on it, send it high into the right-field stands, and Seaver would watch Ruth run, pigeon-toed, around the bases.
Ted Williams: For a thinking pitcher, this is the ultimate puzzle — even more than Babe Ruth. Nobody thought more about hitting than Williams. Nobody thought more about pitching than Seaver. This would be a true battle of wits but without iocane powder.
How Seaver would pitch Williams: Actually, he had no idea. His first idea was to try to get Williams to chase breaking balls out of the zone. Unfortunately, Seaver had no confidence whatsoever that this would work. People tried throughout the 1940s and ’50s to get Williams to chase breaking balls, and the guy never did — he led the league in walks eight times and walked more than 2,000 times overall. The “get him to chase” plan did not seem too promising.
So what was left? “I guess I’d settle for the low outside corner,” Seaver wrote sheepishly. And after that? Hope.
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Almost exactly a month after I saw Seaver pitch in Cleveland, he went to Yankee Stadium with a chance to win his 300th game. There did seem something cinematic about it — Tom Terrific returning to New York for one final bit of glory. There was a flood of stories about Seaver leading up to the game. Reporters followed him everywhere. One of the biggest crowds of the year poured into Yankee Stadium.
He loved it.
“Pressure?” Seaver asked a reporter. “Sometimes media doesn’t understand pressure. I’ve always believed that it brings out the best in exceptional athletes.”
Yes, pressure focused him, always. A couple of years ago, my friend Jonathan Hock and I made a movie called “Generations of the Game,” which plays daily at the Baseball Hall of Fame. As part of that, we went to see Hall of Famers from all over. Seaver was having good days and bad ones — this was just before he was diagnosed with dementia — and he agreed to talk.
And it was one of his good days, a wonderful day. He talked so beautifully about the game and what it means to him. There is so much I take away from his words that day, but mostly I think about something he said to his brother and idol, Charles, who died years ago.
Charles would ask Tom: “What’s it like when there’s 50,000 people and you’re standing on that little plot of ground 60 feet, 6 inches away from home plate?”
Seaver: “I said, ‘Charles, you learn how to control your emotions and make them positive.’ I learned that in the Marine Corps. You are always going to have emotions. You can’t say it’s not there. You have to use those emotions for positive energy.”
How did you do that?
“For me, it was very simple,” Seaver said. “I loved what I was doing. I was like an artist, a physical and mental artist. I would take those emotions, whatever they were, and focus them on what I had to do out there. I loved all of it. I loved 60 feet, 6 inches. I loved the history of the game. Sandy Koufax. Christy Mathewson. Walter Johnson. I loved them.
“I understood the Walter Johnsons. Understood — that’s not the right word. I knew them. In my heart and brain, I knew them. They were artists, and I was an artist, and I loved being a part of that history.”
It was beautiful, and it takes us back to Yankee Stadium, Aug. 4, 1985. Seaver was in the bullpen before the game, warming up as the crowd poured in, and White Sox pitching coach Dave Duncan came by to watch. After a few pitches, Duncan’s face went a bit white, and he stopped Seaver.
“Tom,” he growled, “you don’t have squat tonight.”
Seaver smiled. He would go out that day with squat, with nothing but his mind and his heart and all the things he picked up through the years. He would pitch a complete game, allowing six measly singles and just one run while striking out seven. Another brilliant game in a brilliant career.
And do you know what Tom Seaver said after Duncan told him that his pitches had nothing on them?
He said: “Dave, you know that. And I know that.”
He paused and pointed toward the Yankees dugout.
“But they,” he continued, “they don’t know that. And by the time they realize it, I’ll figure something out.”
 
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